This collection is a gathering of poetry
from China and its Diasporas. A reader unacquainted with any one part
(or more, as is quite possibly the case) will find here a stepping-stone
into a poetry culture that is not only distinguished by its
extraordinary longevity and continuity (at least 2,500 years) but its
extraordinary depth and breadth, in both subject matter and geographic
reach. The inclusion of poets who write in English or other languages in
Hongkong, Macau, Singapore, and non-Asian locations, indicates that the
concept of Chinese-ness in poetry moves writers well beyond China and
the Chinese language. Conversely, most of the non-Han or minority
nationality poets collected here use the Han Chinese script when they
write. That said, Chinese poetry, in any language, travels with the
Chinese people as a readily portable part of their cultural heritage to
every corner of the earth and attracts admiration, if not as universally
as Hollywood movies, fast food restaurants, and localised-versions of
Italian and Chinese food.
There is
the possibility of an argument here claiming that this is an effect of
Chinese cultural imperialism, especially with regard to minority
nationality poets resident in areas of China in which, until recent
decades, they made up the majority population, particularly with regard
to Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and the Turkish-speaking Arabic-writing
peoples of Xinjiang. This mirrors arguments applied to the impact of the
English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese languages in majority immigrant
cultures of the Americas, Africa, and Oceania, but does not fit the
paradigm beyond China's borders, as it may in the former colonies of
England, France, Spain, and Portugal.
The truth is that the millions of Chinese people who live outside of
China are similarly bound together as much by language and poetry as by
racial and regional characteristics, such as food. However, this does
not mean the same forms and topics of classical pre-twentieth century
Chinese verse are still utilized today as they were 100, 1000, or 2000
years ago. The Chinese modern world and modern issues are present in the
poetry here, just as life and culture not-of-China acts as a backdrop to
many poems. This modernity, and in particular the use of colloquial
speech in the writing of much of the poetry of the past eighty-five
years, still proves an obstacle to lovers of the classical forms, both
within and without China. Here comparisons with the reception Dante's
poetry initially received in renaissance Italy are most apt, or even
that of Luther's vernacular Bible  although in this case any resultant
warfare has been, and still is, entirely intellectual.
China has one of the oldest
continuous cultures on the planet. And, until late in the twentieth
century, the written character was at the centre of it, with the art of
poetry at its apex. While this may no longer be the case, after the
rapid rise of the more populist and popular art forms of the novel,
cinema, and TV soap opera in more recent times on the back of
near-universal literacy and modern media, poetry arguably still attracts
far larger numbers of serious practitioners than any other art.
Between 1949 and 1979, officially
published poetry in China was under the firm control of the Chinese
Communist Party's [CCP] cultural establishment and served the
ever-changing party line, or the people, in the parlance of communist
parties everywhere. By the late 1960's, however, growing numbers of the
people, in particular the youth, were increasingly disenchanted with the
CCP line on the arts. A policy requiring students who had completed
their secondary education in the cities to go down to the countryside
and to continue their education at the feet of the nation's farmers had
the secondary effect of providing a hotbed for the creation of a second
world of poetry, one relatively free of CCP aesthetic strictures. To
some degree, all of these educated youths had participated in the Red
Guard Movement that had swept the country during 1966-1969, and were
then forcibly dispersed throughout the land, the more culturally
inclined carrying books of literature, not a few of which had been
previously 'liberated' from the libraries of 'bourgeois' households. The
most famous of the poetry circles that developed in China's countryside
and in secret literary salons in cities first publicly appeared in the
form of the unofficially circulated journal Today in Beijing during
1978-1980. The now iconic poem The Answer by Bei Dao (b. 1949; recent
work collected here) symbolizes the struggle for independence of mind
and a new aesthetics among these nonconformist poets:

. . . I tell you, world
I  do  not  believe!
Even if there be a thousand challengers at your feet,
Then consider
me the thousand-and-first. . .

The Answer was also one
of the first of this new poetry to be officially published in 1979
during one of the CCP's politically inspired bouts of liberalism (other
such periods were 1986, 1988-1989, and most of the past 12 years).
The poems of many of these former
educated youths spoke directly to the millions who had sacrificed years
of their lives in the countryside. Another of the Today poets who found
a large readership was Gu Cheng (1956-1993), whose short poem A
Generation spoke for them all: Black night gave me black eyes / yet I
use them to search for light.
These
youth were in some ways like explorers rediscovering the world, or
discovering a world and a self they had never known before:

. . .  I don't know what else there might be only me,
leaning against that sunlight standing still for ten seconds
sometimes ten seconds can be longer than a quarter of a century

At last, I charge down the stairs, heave open the door, and run in
the spring sun.....

Here in
I Feel the Sun, the woman poet Wang Xiaoni (b. 1955; recent works
anthologized here) luxuriates in a sunlight that is no longer synonymous
with glories of Mao Zedong and the revolution, but is redolent of the
promise of life. This repossession and renaming of previously
over-politicized poetical imagery by poets was a common feature of this
new poetry and opened up new vistas to poets and readers alike.
The poet in the guise of a cultural
hero was also a common feature, most markedly in the work of another
Today poet, Jianghe (b. 1949), who took upon himself the burden of
reinterpreting Chinese history. One of his most famous poems is on The
Memorial Stele to the martyrs of the revolution in Tian'anmen Square:

. . . I think I am the memorial stele My body
is piled full of stones However heavy the history of the Chinese
nation I am that weight However many wounds to it I have
bled that much blood . . .

Another highly influential Today poet
to move off in this direction of searching for roots and reclaiming
Chinese culture from the CCP was Yang Lian (b. 1955; recent works
collected here). One of his poems  The Big Wild Goose Pagoda 
called forth a response from the Nanjing poet Han Dong (b. 1961; recent
work collected here) in 1982 that has come to mark the rise of a younger
generation of poets who have very different ideas about the directions
serious poetry can take.

About The Big Wild Goose Pagoda

What more can we know about the Big Wild Goose Pagoda
Many people hasten from afar to climb it to be a one-time
hero Some still come to do it two or more times The
dissatisfied the stout all climb up to play the hero
then come down and walk into the street below gone in a wink
Some with real guts jump down leave a red bloom on the steps
That's really being the hero a modern-day hero

What more can we learn about the Wild Goose Pagoda We climb
up look around at the scenery then come down again

This mood is indicative of a
difference in experience between the poets. For the most part, the
younger poets had only been passive witnesses of the Red Guards and
later educated youths. Unlike the older poets, they were among the first
students in the reopened universities in the late-1970's, and their
bonding experiences were limited to what they made for themselves there.
The 1984 poem The Chinese Department by the Sichuan poet Li Yawei (b.
1963) is indicative of this very different attitude towards life and
poetry:

The Chinese department is a great well-baited river in
the shallows, a professor and a group of lecturers are casting nets
the netted fish when brought up on the bank become teaching
assistants, later they become secretaries for Qu Yuan, the retinue
of Li Bai and kings in tales for children, then go to cast
their nets again

. . .

The Chinese department also studies foreign
literature primarily Baudelaire and Gorky, one evening a
flustered looking lecturer raced out of the toilets he shouted:
Students disperse immediately, there's a modernist inside

. . .

Sometimes the Chinese department flowed in dreams,
slowly like the waves of urine Yawei pisses on the dry earth, like
the disappearing then again rising footprints behind the pitiful
roaming little Mianyang, its waves are following piles of sealed
exams for graduation off into the distance

New subject matter and diction is also
reflected in experimentation with form. Indeed, a bifurcation in the
ranks of avant-garde poetry dates from this time and runs through to
this day. Generally speaking, the upholders of the Today-inspired line
are more interested in the traditions of western high modernism as
defined by Elliot and the later Pound (of the poets collected here Chen
Dongdong, Wang Jiaxin, Sun Wenbo, and Ouyang Jianghe may be included in
this tendency); while the younger, somewhat reactionary line takes a
greater interest in what Christopher Simons [The Liberal, London,
July/August '05, Issue V: 36] terms democratization, although the poets
themselves might describe it as an intense interest in life and an
attempt to reflect it in forms and language that speak to more than just
poets (in this collection this tendency is represented by Han Dong, Yu
Jian, Li Sen, and Yin Lichuan).
There has also been a great increase
in woman poets delving into subject matter that can be termed
woman-specific, as well as new, more direct approaches to the topics of
love and sex, previously taboo in both traditional Chinese culture and
in the new'puritan culture the CCP has attempted to inculcate since
1949. Zhai Yongming (b. 1955) has been one of the most influential poets
of the woman's poetry trend since the mid-1980's, while Yin Lichuan is one of the most prominent of recent years.
In fact, this 'younger'line of poetry
cleaves to the thoroughly earthy nature of Chinese folk arts and humour
that are still very much alive among the general populace a tradition
that even Mao appreciated and incorporated into his classical-form
poetry, even if others were not allowed to emulate his practice (see
Xiao Kaiyu's for a poetical comment on this subject). Since
the late 1980's, this trend in poetry has also featured attacks on
capitalism that are often linked to western and Japanese imperialism of
recent Chinese memory. One of the earlier examples of this is the 1989
poem Slaughter by the Sichuan poet Liao Yiwu (b. 1958):

. . .The real you is refused entry to a hotel because of
your accent, stares eagerly at 'Tailang', 'Gangcun', 'Songjing'
embracing your sisters as they climb the steps and enter a room,
loosen clothes and undo belts, cherry blossoms and ancient rhythms
induce dreams, and your sisters call out softly Thank you for your
attentions after being seduced and raped by foreign currency, jewelry,
furniture, and top-quality woolen fabrics

Now three hundred thousand bitter souls in the War of Resistance Against
Japan Museum shout in alarm 'the devils have entered the city', in
our hallucination three hundred thousand bars revolve, run wild,
shatter, like horse hooves sweeping past amidst gun smoke ..

Begun in the spring of
1989, the two concluding sections of the four-part poem dealt with the
very real slaughter that occurred on June Fourth:

. . .
Another sort of slaughter takes place at Utopia's core The prime
minister catches cold, the people must cough; martial law is declared
again and again The toothless old machinery of the state rolls
toward those who have the courage to resist the sickness
Unarmed thugs fall by the thousands! Ironclad professional killers swim
in a sea of blood, set fires beneath tightly shuttered windows,
wipe their regulation army boots with the skirts of dead maidens.
They are incapable of trembling These heartless robots are incapable
of trembling! Their electronic brains have only one program: an
official document full of holes . . .

Liao was later sentenced to four years
in prison for his efforts. (Elsewhere in this collection, the Hongkong
poet Louise Ho offers a different localized perspective on the massacre
in .)
All through this period, the example
of Today as an unofficial (and thus illegal) publication has been
emulated by hundreds of poetry groups throughout China. In fact, almost
all avant-poetry is first published in this second world of poetry and
only later finds its way into official publication, or not (such as
Liao's Slaughter). Furthermore, since 2000, the Internet has also
served as a major outlet for such poetry, as witnessed by the hundreds
of websites, forums, and blogs that have sprung into being. A majority
of the forums and blogs are associated with the younger, popular trend
of the avant-garde, a situation that developed after a nationwide public
polemic that occurred in 1998-1999. This polemic was between two broad
camps of poets under the over-arching labels of Intellectual Writing
and Popular Writing. The polemic still simmers on, but as shown above
has been present in varying forms since the early 1980's.
Contrary to what some may believe,
such a polemic and the intense interest demonstrated by and the large
numbers of younger poets born in the 1970's and 1980's is indicative of
the continuing health of the art of poetry. While politically the
country may be a dictatorship, the poets of China are in no mood to
accept anything but plurality and vivacity in pursuit of excellence in
their art.
Of the minority nationality poets
collected here, only the Yi poet Jimu Langge is a sometimes-active
participant in these polemics. This participation dates back to 1986 and
his involvement with the Sichuan-based Not-Not avant-garde poetry group
and its unofficial journals. Originally written in Chinese, the poems
collected here portray the continued strength of Yi traditions as well
as a sense of difference from Han Chinese friends.
Woeser, a Tibetan woman poet who also
writes in Chinese and contributed to issues of Not-Not published during
the early 1990's, writes of a sense of loss, centering on images of Lhasa
and the Potala Palace in two of her poems. A stronger sense of
nationalism can be found in the work of her compatriots Mei Zhuo and
Yidam Tsering, the former making use of Tibetan Buddhist history and the
latter strong political imagery to get their messages across. The Mongol
poet Bai Tao also infuses his poetry with a strong nationalist
message mixed with feelings of loss, while Ran Ran is a poet who uses
Chinese to write of the life of the Tujia people in present day China.
The poetry scenes in Taiwan, Hongkong,
Macau, and Singapore do not closely mirror events on the Mainland China
scene. The work of the poets collected here reflect their relationship
with Chinese culture and the local environment, and it is understandable
that poets in Hongkong and Macau may feel closer links and react more
readily to events in China proper (especially since reunification in
1997 and 1999 respectively). The introductory essays to the sections
that hold their poetry offer a better overview of poetical events in
each locality. Many of the poets in
the Overseas section are self-exiles from China. A founding member of
the Today group together with Bei Dao and Mang Ke in Beijing in the
1970s, Duo Duo left China on 4 June 1989, but returned to live there
again in 2003. Bei Dao, Yang Lian, Yan Li, and Ha Jin all left China
before that date and, with the possible exception of Bei Dao, are at
home with their overseas lives. Furthermore, their recent poetry seldom
features themes of exile and loneliness, as some might expect it to, and
as it once did. However, memory does feature prominently among some of
the poets in this section.
Given the lively and burgeoning nature
of Chinese poetry on the Internet today, there are ready opportunities
for overseas poets to continue to participate in the poetry scene on
mainland China. Yang Lian is one of those at the forefront of this new
trend: in early 2005, he participated in an open chat room discussion on
one of the most popular avant-garde poetry websites in China
(www.poemlife.net), and he and his novelist-life partner Yo Yo have
recently opened a joint personal website. Since 1987 the New York-based
poet Yan Li (formerly a member of Today and the Stars Art Group in
Beijing during the early 1980s) has been editing the poetry journal One
Line that is privately distributed in China, and both this journal and
the reconstituted overseas version of Today (since 1991) operate
websites, although neither features chat rooms. On the other hand, Yan
Li occasionally participates in mainland China chat rooms and regularly
contributes poetry to paper journals and webzines, both official and
unofficial.
Taken together, this collection offers
the reader a unique insight into the global Chinese poetry scene over
the past 25 years. Through their work these poets demonstrate the
complicated, multi-faceted nature of what it is to be a present-day
Chinese poet, whether inside or outside China.

* * *

Michael Martin Day
was born and educated in Vancouver, Canada. He received
his BA in Asian Studies and the Chinese Language from the University of
British Columbia (UBC) in 1985 and his MA in Modern Chinese Literature
from the same university in 1994. Between the years 1982 and 1992, he
spent seven years in China, first as a cultural exchange scholarship
student at the universities of Shandong and Nanjing, then as a teacher
of English language and literature in Zhanjiang and Xi'an, and later as
a journalist and editor in Beijing and Hongkong. He began teaching the
Chinese language as an assistant lecturer at UBC in 1986, and later
served in the same position for courses in Modern Chinese Literature in
Chinese and a General Introduction to East Asian History and Culture. In
1995 and 1996, he was lecturer in charge of the Chinese Language Summer
Program at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada. Since 2000,
he has worked at Charles University, Prague, as a part-time lecturer of
Modern Chinese Poetry, Advanced Chinese, and Poetry Translation. In
2002, he entered the Doctoral program at the University of Leiden, the
Netherlands, as a long-distance student under the supervision of
Professor Maghiel van Crevel. In September 2003, he was awarded a CCK
Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, which made the writing of
his thesis possible. He has published several English language
translations of Chinese poetry and fiction in Canada, the USA, the UK,
and the Netherlands, as well as articles on Chinese poetry and politics
in the Czech Republic, Hongkong, and China (prior to 1989), and has
given numerous public lectures and talks on Chinese literature, culture,
and politics. His doctorate China's Second World of Poetry: The
Sichuan Avant-Garde, 1982-1992 was published as an openly accessible
e-book on the day of official graduation at the University of Leiden in
October 2005. This, other internet-related work, and an anthology of
translated poetry are available at
http://www.sino.uni-heidelberg.de/dachs/leiden/poetry/index.html, the
poetry page of the Digital Archive for Chinese Studies, a joint-project
operated by the universities of Heidelberg and Leiden. Michael has
recently emigrated to join his wife in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He has translated a number
of poets in this feature.